The Young Playthings

Posted over 6 years ago (27 June 2009)

Oh, this isn’t bad it just isn’t engaging. The Young Playthings don’t appear to know what they want to be, an exclusive indie band or a pop sensation. One suspects that they’d grasp the pop sensation status with both hands but have already convinced themselves that they are too intelligent and sensitive to waste time on such frivolity. So we are presented with this hybrid of earnest jangly guitars and rampant drum patterns which meanders through paths trodden a million times before.

The band are absolutely at their best when giving in to their pop sensibilities on the slickly soulful Y Don’t U Like Me and the amusing albeit Jamiroquai-lite funk of I like yr name in my Blackberry. You may have noticed that the band have a penchant for text speak which, in my book, should be punishable by death. Grammar aside, this is perfectly listenable, with Bateman standing out for its Dinosaur Jnr whimsicality. Some Badness Goes On, apparently written about random murders, has promise but the delivery is too reminiscent of Rik from the Young Ones to ever really set the pulse racing.